Bela Lugosi
| Bela Lugosi | ||
 Lugosi ~ 1912 | ||
| Background information | ||
| Born as: | Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó | |
| Born | Oct 20, 1882 Lugoj, Kingdom of Hungary, Austria-Hungary | |
| Died | Aug 16, 1956 - age 74 Los Angeles, California, U.S. | |
| Spouse(s): | Ilona Szmick (1917 - 1920) divorced Ilona von Montagh (1921 - 1924) divorced Beatrice Weeks (1929 - 1929) divorced Lillian Arch (1933 - 1953) divorced Hope Lininger (1955 - ) | |
| Children: | Bela George Lugosi | |
| Occupation: | Actor | |
| Years active | 1902–1956 | |
| Website: | http://belalugosi.com | |
Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó (✦October 20, 1882 – †August 16, 1956), known professionally as Bela Lugosi, was a Hungarian and American actor best remembered for portraying Count Dracula in the 1931 English-language Dracula, Ygor in Son of Frankenstein (1939) and his roles in many other horror films from 1931 through 1956.
Lugosi began acting on the Hungarian stage in 1902. After playing in 172 different productions in his native Hungary, Lugosi moved on to making silent films in 1917. He had to suddenly emigrate to Germany after the failed Hungarian Communist Revolution of 1919 because of his former socialist activities, leaving his first wife in the process. He acted in several films in Weimar Germany, before arriving in New Orleans as a seaman on a merchant ship, then making his way north to New York City and Ellis Island.
In 1927, he starred as Count Dracula in a Broadway adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel, moving with the play to the West Coast in 1928 and settling down in Hollywood. He later starred in the 1931 film version of Dracula directed by Tod Browning and produced by Universal Pictures. Through the 1930s, he occupied an important niche in horror films, but his notoriety as "Dracula" and ominous thick Hungarian accent greatly limited the roles offered to him, and he unsuccessfully tried for years to avoid the typecasting.
He was often paired in films with Boris Karloff, who was able to demand top billing. To his frustration, Lugosi, a charter member of the American Screen Actors Guild, was increasingly restricted to minor parts because of his inability to speak the English language more clearly. He was kept employed by the studios principally so that they could put his name on the posters. Among his teamings with Karloff, he performed major roles only in The Black Cat (1934), The Raven(1935), and Son of Frankenstein (1939); even in The Raven, Karloff received top billing despite Lugosi performing the lead role. By this time, Lugosi had been receiving regular medication for sciatic neuritis, and he became addicted to doctor-prescribed morphine and methadone. This drug dependence (and his gradually worsening alcoholism) was becoming apparent to producers, and after 1948's Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, the offers dwindled to a few parts in low-budget films; some of these were directed by Ed Wood, including a brief (posthumous) appearance in Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957).
Lugosi married five times and had one son, Bela George (with his fourth wife, Lillian).
Early life
Lugosi, the youngest of four children, was born Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó in 1882 in Lugos, Kingdom of Hungary (now Lugoj, Romania) to Hungarian father István Blaskó, a baker who later became a banker, and Serbian-born mother Paula de Vojnich. He was raised in a Roman Catholic family.
At the age of 12, Lugosi dropped out of school and left home to work at a succession of manual labor jobs. His father died during his absence. He began his stage-acting career in 1902. His earliest known performances are from provincial theatres in the 1903–04 season, playing small roles in several plays and operettas. He took the last name "Lugosi" in 1903 to honor his birthplace and went on to perform in Shakespeare plays. After moving to Budapest in 1911, he played dozens of roles with the National Theatre of Hungary between 1913 and 1919. Although Lugosi would later claim that he "became the leading actor of Hungary's Royal National Theatre", many of his roles there were small or supporting parts.
During World War I, he served as an infantryman in the Austro-Hungarian Army from 1914 to 1916, rising to the rank of Lieutenant. He was awarded the Wound Medal for wounds he sustained while serving on the Russian front. Returning to civilian life, Lugosi became an actor in Hungarian silent films, appearing in many of them under the stage name "Arisztid Olt".
Due to his activism in the actors' union in Hungary during the revolution of 1919 and his active participation in the Hungarian Soviet Republic, he was forced to flee his homeland when the government changed hands, initially accompanied by his first wife. He escaped to Vienna before settling in Berlin (in the Langestrasse), where he began acting in German silent films, while his wife left him and returned home to her parents where she filed for divorce. Lugosi eventually travelled to New Orleans, Louisiana in December, 1920 working as a crewman aboard a merchant ship, then made his way north to New York City, where he again took up acting in plays and in the film industry there. He later moved to Hollywood in 1928. He eventually became a U.S. citizen in 1931, soon after the release of his signature film Dracula.
Ed Wood and final projects
Late in his life, Bela Lugosi again received star billing in films when the ambitious but financially limited filmmaker Ed Wood, a fan of Lugosi, found him living in obscurity and near-poverty and offered him roles in his films, such as an anonymous narrator in Glen or Glenda (1953) and a mad scientist in Bride of the Monster (1955). During post-production of the latter, Lugosi decided to seek treatment for his drug addiction, and the premiere of the film was arranged to raise money for Lugosi's hospital expenses. According to Kitty Kelley's biography of Frank Sinatra, when the entertainer heard of Lugosi's problems, he sent him a $100 check and visited Lugosi at the hospital. Sinatra would recall Lugosi's amazement at his visit, since the two men had never met before.
During an impromptu interview upon his release from the treatment center in 1955, Lugosi stated that he was about to begin work on a new Ed Wood film called The Ghoul Goes West. This was one of several projects proposed by Wood, including The Phantom Ghoul and Dr. Acula. With Lugosi in his Dracula cape, Wood shot impromptu test footage, with no particular storyline in mind, in front of Tor Johnson's home, a suburban graveyard, and in front of Lugosi's apartment building on Carlton Way. This footage ended up in Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957), which was filmed in 1956 soon after Lugosi died. Wood hired Tom Mason, his wife's chiropractor, to double for Lugosi in additional shots. Mason was noticeably taller and thinner than Lugosi, and had the lower half of his face covered with his cape in every shot, as Lugosi sometimes did in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.
Following his treatment, Lugosi made one final film, in late 1955, The Black Sleep, for Bel-Air Pictures, which was released in the summer of 1956 through United Artists with a promotional campaign that included several personal appearances by Bela and his co-stars as well as Maila Nurmi (TV's "Vampira"). To Lugosi's disappointment, however, his role in this film was that of a mute butler with no dialogue. Lugosi was intoxicated and very ill during the promotional campaign and had to return to L.A. earlier than planned.
Personal life
Lugosi repeatedly married. In 1917, Lugosi married 19-year-old Ilona Szmik (1898–1991) in Hungary. The couple divorced after Lugosi was forced to flee his homeland for political reasons (risking execution if he stayed) and Ilona did not wish to leave her parents. The divorce became final on July 17, 1920, uncontested since Lugosi could not attend the proceedings.
After living briefly in Germany, Lugosi arrived in New Orleans on October 27, 1920, and, after making his way north, underwent his primary alien inspection at Ellis Island, N.Y. on March 23, 1921.
In 1921, he married actress Ilona von Montagh in New York City, and she divorced him on November 11, 1924, charging him with adultery and complaining that he wanted her to abandon her acting career to keep house for him.
Lugosi took his place in Hollywood society and scandal when he married wealthy San Francisco resident Beatrice Woodruff Weeks (1897–1931), widow of architect Charles Peter Weeks, on July 27, 1929. Weeks subsequently filed for divorce on November 4, 1929, accusing Lugosi of infidelity and citing actress Clara Bow as the "other woman". The divorce became official on December 9, 1929. Weeks died 17 months later (at age 34) from alcoholism in Florida, Lugosi never receiving a penny from her fortune. On June 26, 1931, Lugosi became a naturalized United States citizen.
In 1933, the 51-year-old Lugosi married 22-year-old Lillian Arch (1911–1981), the daughter of Hungarian immigrants living in Hollywood. They had a child, Bela G. Lugosi, in 1938. Bela eventually had four grandchildren and six great-grandchildren, although he never lived to meet any of them.
Lillian and Bela vacationed on their lake property in Lake Elsinore, California (then called Elsinore), on several lots between 1944 and 1953. Lillian's father lived on one of their properties, and Lugosi frequented a health spa in the area. Bela Lugosi Jr. was boarded at the Elsinore Naval and Military School in Lake Elsinore, and lived with Lillian's parents while she and Bela were touring. After almost breaking up their marriage in 1944, Lillian and Béla finally divorced on July 17, 1953, at least partially because of Béla's excessive drinking[2] and his jealousy over Lillian taking a full-time job as an assistant to actor Brian Donlevy on Donlevy's radio and television series Dangerous Assignment. Lillian got custody of their son. She eventually did marry Brian Donlevy in 1966, leaving one alcoholic husband for another, and died in 1981.
Lugosi married Hope Lininger, his fifth wife, in 1955; she was 37 years his junior. She had been a fan, writing letters to him when he was in the hospital, recovering from addiction to Demerol. She would sign her letters "A dash of Hope". They remained married until his death about a year later.
Death
Lugosi died of a heart attack on Thursday, August 16, 1956, in his Los Angeles apartment while taking a nap. His wife Hope discovered him dead on his bed dressed only in his underwear when she came home from work that evening, he having apparently died peacefully in his sleep around 6:45 PM according to the medical examiner.[2] He was 73 and weighed 140 pounds.[1] The rumor that Lugosi was clutching the script for The Final Curtain, a planned Ed Wood project, at the time of his death is not true.
Lugosi was buried wearing one of the "Dracula" capes and his full costume as well as his Dracula ring in the Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California. Contrary to popular belief, Lugosi never requested to be buried in his cloak; Bela G. Lugosi confirmed on numerous occasions that he and his mother, Lillian, made the decision but believed that it is what his father would have wanted.
The funeral was held on Saturday, August 18 at the Utter-McKinley funeral home in Hollywood. Attendees included Forrest J. Ackerman, Edward D. Wood Jr. (who was a pall bearer), Tor Johnson, Conrad Brooks, Richard Sheffield, both widows Hope and Lillian, Bela Lugosi Jr., Norma McCarty, Loretta King, Paul Marco and George Becwar. Bela's fourth wife Lillian paid for the cemetery plot and stone (which was inscribed "Beloved Father"), while Hope Lugosi paid for the coffin and the service. Lugosi's will left several inexpensive pieces of property in Elsinore and only $1,000.00 cash to his son. Still, since the will had been written on Jan. 12, 1954 (before Lugosi's fifth marriage), Bela Jr. had to share the thousand dollars evenly with Hope.
Hope later gave most of Lugosi's personal belongings and memorabilia to Bela's young neighborhood friend Richard Sheffield, who gave Lugosi's duplicate Dracula cape to Bela Jr. and sold some of the other items to Forrest J. Ackerman. Hope told Sheffield she had searched the apartment for several days looking for $3,000.00 she suspected Lugosi had hidden there, but she never found it. Sheffield said years later "Lugosi had probably spent it all on alcohol." Hope later moved to Hawaii, where she worked for many years as a caregiver in a leper colony Hope died in Hawaii in 1997, at age 78, having never remarried.
California Supreme Court decision on personality rights
In 1979, the Lugosi v. Universal Pictures decision by the California Supreme Court held that Lugosi's personality rights could not pass to his heirs, as a copyright would have. The court ruled that under California law any rights of publicity, including the right to his image, terminated with Lugosi's death.
Legacy
In Tim Burton's Ed Wood, Bela Lugosi is portrayed by Martin Landau, who received the 1994 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the performance. According to Bela G. Lugosi (his son), Forrest Ackerman, Dolores Fuller and Richard Sheffield, the film's portrayal of Lugosi is inaccurate: In real life, he never used profanity, owned small dogs, or slept in coffins.
An episode of Sledge Hammer! titled "Last of the Red Hot Vampires" was an homage to Bela Lugosi; at the end of the episode, it was dedicated to "Mr. Blasko".
In 2001, BBC Radio 4 broadcast There Are Such Things by Steven McNicoll and Mark McDonnell. Focusing on Lugosi and his well-documented struggle to escape from the role that had typecast him, the play went on to receive the Hamilton Deane Award for best dramatic presentation from the Dracula Society in 2002.
On July 19, 2003, German artist Hartmut Zech erected a bust of Lugosi on one of the corners of Vajdahunyad Castle in Budapest.
The Ellis Island Immigration Museum in New York City features a live 30-minute play that focuses on Lugosi's illegal entry into the country and then his arrival at Ellis Island to enter the country legally.
The cape Lugosi wore in Dracula (1931) was in possession of his family until it was put up for auction in 2011. It was expected to sell for up to $2 million but has since been listed again by Bonhams in 2018. In 2019 the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures announced the acquisition of the cape via a partial donation from the Lugosi family and that the cape will be on display in 2020.
Péter Müller's theatrical play Lugosi – the Shadow of the Vampire (Hungarian: Lugosi – a vámpír árnyéka) is based on Lugosi's life, telling the story of his life as he became typecast as Dracula and as his drug addiction worsened. In the Hungarian production, directed by István Szabó, Lugosi was played by Ivan Darvas.
Andy Warhol's 1963 silkscreen "The Kiss" depicts Lugosi from Dracula about to bite into the neck of co-star Helen Chandler, who played Mina Harker. A copy sold for $798,000 at Christie's in May 2000.[67]
In 1979, a song called "Bela Lugosi's Dead" was released by UK post-punk band Bauhaus and is widely considered to be a pioneering song in the Goth music genre. On choosing the song's topic, the band's bassist David J remarked "It's so weird you should say that, because I've got this lyric about Bela Lugosi, the actor who played a vampire. There was a season of old horror films on TV and I was telling Daniel about how much I loved them. The one that had been on the night before was Dracula [1931]. I was saying how Bela Lugosi was the quintessential Dracula, the elegant depiction of the character."
Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff are referenced in the Curtis Stigers' song "Sleeping with the Lights On", from the 1991 album Curtis Stigers.
Lugosi's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is mentioned in "Celluloid Heroes", a song performed by The Kinks and written by their lead vocalist and principal songwriter, Ray Davies. It appeared on their 1972 album "Everybody's in Show-Biz."
According to Paru Itagaki, the creator of the Japanese manga/anime Beastars, the main character Legoshi was inspired by Bela Lugosi (regarding the similar-sounding names).
In 2020, Legendary Comics published an adaptation of Bram Stoker's 1897 "Dracula" novel, which used the likeness of Lugosi.
A 2021 hardcover graphic novel depicting the life of Bela Lugosi was written and drawn by Koren Shadmi, entitled Lugosi: The Rise and Fall of Hollywood's Dracula.
Filmography
- Wikipedia article: Bela Lugosi filmography
- Wikipedia article: Bela Lugosi
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Note: Bela Lugosi was a volunteer at the Hollywood Canteen |
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